What is the Essence of an RPG?

I am guessing your first reaction to the title is something along the lines of. “Is this guy really going to tell me about what one of the most popular genres of games is? Thanks man, appreciate it.” It may initially sound dumb to many as to why asking this question would garner any sort of contemplation or discussion. However, RPGs, short for role-playing games, are a peculiar genre in which there is not any one major mechanic or gameplay element that sets it apart.

What is a racing game? Obviously a game in which you race in some way. What is a First-Person Shooter? I game where you shoot while controlling a character in the first-person.What is a Beat-Em Up? A genre where you, well, beat ‘em up of course.

Alright, it looks like we have some common method of defining genres. So, what is an RPG? A game in which you play the role of a character, right? Well, not exactly. With that logic, almost every game ever made would be considered one. It is obvious though that there is some agreed upon understanding of what an RPG is, or else we would not be able to say Pokemon is an RPG while Super Mario Bros is not. But then, are all RPGs role-playing games for the same reasons? Is the reason that Pokemon is an RPG the same as The Elder Scrolls?

How about we go back to see where the term derived from to try to figure it out. Role-playing video games seem to generally be considered to be an evolution from early tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeon & Dragons. Let us look at tabletop RPGs then.

As the player, you control a single character or group of characters to reach the conclusion of some storyline. Usually, there is a combination of puzzles and combat. A defining feature of the genre comes from the idea of being able to improve your character’s powers and abilities throughout the story, and many allow the player to create the character themselves.

Most RPGs are set in some type of fantastical world to allow the characters to perform crazy unrealistic feats, while also allowing for a believable sense of character progression. The story can often be a central element of the experience, often being the reward for playing the game. Story decisions often are progressed through a multitude of different ways, not just beating a level. Did the player decide to join guild 1 or guild 2? Did the player decide to side with the quest giver or the guy who plotted to kill said quest giver? While these options all may ultimately lead to one conclusion, there are many different ways in which players can reach the conclusion.

Combat in tabletop RPGs usually involves a turn-based system where players take turns moving and attacking enemies until either the players or enemies are defeated. The combat is usually backed by dice rolls, adding a chance system to the fight. The combat is more of a test of the character that the player has created than the player themselves. The player selects attack and abilities, and the success of that action depends on the character's numeric attributes.

Tabletop RPGs are also commonly associated with having a strong character customization system. Usually, they give the characters a multitude of stats that affect all aspects of the character. These stats are selected by the player at the beginning, allowing them to decide what type of character they want to play as. From Strength to Personality, these attributes give the characters their own unique features. This dictates various mechanics of the game such as how much damage they will do in combat, and how convincing they will be in conversations. It makes every play through unique as your characters will be built differently, allowing them to be able to approach similar situations very differently. These stats will increase as the character levels up, making characters better as they continue to experience the world.

Whew. That’s a lot of stuff. To try to condense that down to a more digestible format, I would say the core aspects of tabletop RPGs are:

Character customization/creation

Character based progression rather than player progression (leveling up character stats, receiving stronger equipment, etc.)

Multiple ways to solve any quest or puzzle

Character focused combat

This is absolutely a gross overstatement of the genre, but I think it holds the core of most tabletop RPGs for our needs. So, let us move on to its birth into the video game medium.

Computer RPGs began in the 1970s, which were directly inspired by their tabletop ancestors. Games like Dungeon, pedit5, and dnd took the core of tabletop and translated it to the digital space. Simplifications had to be made of course, but it was overall a faithful successor to their inspirations.

Screenshot of the combat screen in Wizardry

It was not until the release of games such as Ultima I or Wizardry that the computer RPG genre really started to kick it off. Both games allowed for a small amount of customization of characters, and prominently featured equipment management and character progression through leveling. Wizardry was all about bringing a selected party of characters through a dungeon to try to get to the end. Players would constantly be leveling up their party, and collecting loot from enemies they defeat to make their characters stronger.

Overworld Exploration in Ultima I

Ultima was focused on a single character that the player creates, allowing the player to create and play as one character in a grand story that brought them from town to town. You would travel in an overworld, which is an area where the player moves around a continent when their character is a gigantic size. Upon landing on a tile that represents a town or dungeon, the player would then zoom in to a new map of just the town or cave they landed on. It is an abstraction to make the world in the game seem gigantic, while actually being quite small.

Combat Screen in Final Fantasy 1

From these two games, a new style of RPG emerged from Japan in the form of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. This caused a major shift in the RPG genre, being split between what people began to call Western RPGs and Japanese RPGs (JRPGs).

Western RPGs, almost exclusively being on the PC in the 80s and 90s, stayed as true to the tabletop routes as possible. These games usually focused on the player creating a single character, allocating attributes and skills to them. They usually were “blank slate” characters, which are characters with no set personality or background in which the player can decide who they are and what their backstory is. These games also tended to be very open ended, with many different quests and objectives being available for the player to finish in many different ways. They are more focused on roaming freedom, realism, and underlying game mechanics.

Japanese RPGs, on the other hand, created their own spin to the genre. Instead of the free form character creation of Western RPGs, JRPGs instead focused on tightly-orchestrated, linear story lines with intricate and developed plots. Players usually have no power in making decisions in the plot, which leaves it in stark contrast to their Western counterparts. They were more focused on telling a strong narrative with the characters they created for the player to experience. They would tell their story while using the turn-based and character focused structure of traditional RPGs. You still were able to customize characters with equipment and weapons, and level them up throughout the journey to make them grow stronger. The characters and presentation are usually inspired by and have a similar style to Japanese Anime and Manga, usually (but not always) making the game more light-hearted and comedic.

While there are many other subgenres that fall under RPGs, such as action RPGs and Tactical RPGs, I would say that the major split is between the Western style and Japanese style. The biggest difference between the two usually lies in linear character-focused plots vs free form, opened ended narratives.

So yeah, now we know the origins and major variations in RPGs. So, we should be able to define it now, right? There has to be a few elements that are shared among all RPGs that we can pick out. RPGs have characters who grow in power throughout the game, and players are able to customize them to their play style. That would seem like the immediate mechanic that brings all RPGs together, right? When most people think RPG, they think leveling and skill and ability customization.

Leveling up if Call of Duty (not an RPG)

Well, not exactly. You see, a weird phenomenon started in the 21st century in gaming. A lot of games started to take the leveling and equipment systems, and place them into their non RPG genres. For instance, the popular first-person shooter, Call of Duty, added a leveling and ability system in their multiplayer modes. No one considers Call of Duty to be an RPG, so leveling and equipment management could not possibly be what differentiates an RPG from other genres. It definitely is a necessary component, but not what sets them apart.

If you would look back to the roots of the genre in tabletop, you would probably guess that the turn-based and character-focused battles, open ended quests and stories, or even complete character customization/creation may be what sets them apart. However, both of these ideas have been broken by subgenres of RPGs in the past. Action RPGs are obviously not turn based, therefore the battles are in real-time and are at least, in small part, based off of player skill. Both open-ended storytelling and character customization/creation are obviously broken by the behemoth subgenre of JRPG as described earlier. So if we were to try to use tabletop as purely our basis for defining RPGs, then JRPGs are not actually RPGs by definition.

So we are at an impass where mechanics that are shared between all RPG subgenres (particularly Western RPG and JRPG) are seen in other games not considered RPGs, and all other aspects of the games are not universally shared between all subgenres. This leads me to the conclusion that maybe JRPGs are technically not RPGs, although they come from the same roots as RPGs. Every component found in JRPGs that is RPG-like has been used in games not considered RPGs. This includes leveling, ability and skill customization, and character-focused gameplay (which is not always even in JRPGs). I would argue that tradional JRPGs are actually adventure games with heavy RPG elements, only using RPG in the name because of their roots to the classic RPGs of the early 1980’s. Don't get me wrong, as I do not have any issue with JRPGs as a genre. However, I believe that they have strayed far enough away from their roots to be a completely different genre from traditional RPGs, not a subgenre of them.

If we assume this to be true, what makes an RPG an RPG then? I would argue it goes as follows:

• Character customization/creation

• Character progression (leveling up, receiving better equipment, customizing skills and abilities, etc.)

• Affordance to complete objectives in a variety of different manners

Very similar to the tabletop list (omitting the necessity of character focused combat entirely), but I think this combination of three mechanics is at the core of “true” RPGs. The biggest mechanics to point out are the combination of the first and last one. Having objectives able to be solved in a variety of different manners are what allow players to really play the role of the character they are playing. If I create a sleathy murderer, there should be a way in which I can complete major objectives in a manner that would make sense for MY character I created. Character progression and skill/ability customization is also very important. However, I believe those mechanics only bring games to “having RPG elements'' rather than being full fledged RPGs. In essence, RPGs are truly RPGs when players have the feeling of being a character in a world and truly making a difference in the game. I believe that role-playing games are all about feeling like you are transported into a living and breathing world, where you have the power to influence the outcome of both the story and the world at large. It is this feeling of "freedom" that I believe distinguishes "true" role-playing games from other genres that use similar mechanics. This is what makes JRPGs different than Western RPGs.

In the end, I am not sure if the conclusion I made is the correct one. I think there is much discussion to be had on the matter, and I would be more than open to hearing differing viewpoints.